ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to show transition from individualistic liberalism to unsystematic collectivism or socialism, which has characterised the development of English law during the later part of the nineteenth century. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the restraints imposed by law on free discussion had all but vanished. Statutes or common law rules which, except on the ground of sedition or defamation, interfered with liberty of speech or writing were, in practice at any rate, obsolete. The reform, of law and society in accordance with the principle of utility depended on the possibility of calculating, not indeed with anything like mathematical but with a certain sort of rough accuracy, the effect of a given law in increasing or diminishing human happiness. The application of laissez faire, first published for sale in 1830, gradually gained the approval of English public opinion.
